Autoflower seedling twisted down curling leaves

[Tom81]

Hello,

New to growing auto plants - for a start, I made the mistake of not planting it in its final pot, so now it's in about a half liter one waiting to be strong enough for re-potting..

From the start the leaves looked yellowish, and were curling down - this is said to be due to overwatering, so I did not add any water for the next 2-3 day, the yellowing seemed to improve but not the down curling. Now the soil was dry so thinking it might now be underwatered, I sprayed a little water on the soil and leaves, but the down curling of leaves seems to be getting worse.
Any ideas?

Thanks

[Catfish22]

Is it getting enough light? It doesn't look bad just use the spray bottle to spray the 3-4 inches around the plant not the leaves. I usually do 4 or 5 sprays to wet the soil then a couple more. If your drainage is good you shoild be ok. I hesitate to say adjust your light because I don't know what your using but it looks like maybe a little more light might help.

[SoOrbudgal]

Hello Tom81 hope that soil isn't full of animal manure.

[Tom81]

Hey, thanks for your message.
You're correct regarding the light as currently it's only getting about 9 hours of sunshine as my LED lights are due to arrive tomorrow then my plan is to put it out in the sun during the day and then have it under the lights to give it a total of 20hrs a day.
I think the soil is also a problem, doesn't seem to be draining well, I wanna transfer it asap to a 15L pot, 30/70% perlite/soil mix, but I read that I should wait with the re-potting until it has 2-3 nodes at least.
So would the twisting of the leaves be caused by insufficient light or something else do you think?

[SoOrbudgal]

most likely it's the soil whatever it is

[Tom81]

Soil is what I could pick up at the local garden shop with the closest to best PH at 6.4, containing 40% blonde peat, 30% compost from green plants, 20% pine bark, 10% wood fibers.
So I want to mix 30% perlite into this when re-potting. Would this soil be okay though?

[Canuck147]

Ixnay on the bark mulch eh?

[Tom81]

The curling and twisting is getting worse. Any ideas?

[Catfish22]

If it were mine, I wouldn't be too worried about it. I would be worried about that grow media, I use coco with about 35% perlite, your on the right track though get it repotted as soon as possible and mix in your perlite. I would pick out as much bark and such as possible also. If you can get some better soil or coco with perlite that's better but plenty of weed has been grown in potting mix. Just get it as clean as you can.

Your light will help greatly when you get it. Do you have like a clamp light or something you can put like a 150 w CFL in?

[Tom81]

The soil might actually be okay with the perlite mixed in once repotted as no perlite was added in the current pot so the draining will definitely improve.
The lights arrived, it's a Viparspectra P600, and after like 10hrs or so under it the leaves now pretty much look normal which makes me conclude that it probably had heat stress outside in the direct sun, as the temperature tends to go up to like 25-27C on the balcony... so I think I'll leave it under the LEDs now until it gets bigger and stronger.
The one thing that does worry me about the soil though is, I've seen some tiny things jumping around in it, nothing on the leaves but not sure if it was something that could attack the roots.... if I can catch one I'll take a pic under the microscope. I'm thinking to sterilize the soil before repotting - not sure though.. any thoughts? Thanks

[Canuck147]

where is it getting its sunlight? Outside or through a window?
most windows can cut out 97% of uv rays

[Tom81]

Direct sun outside on the balcony. It seems the curling of the leaves was caused by heat stress as under the LEDs they look much better now.

[Tom81]

So this is day 20, she's been repotted into a 15L perlite rich soil some 3 days ago.
Still very small for her age, wondering if she's' gonna finish okay...